Download the book
Gretchen Rubin · 301 pages
Rating: (111.6K votes)
“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Never start a sentence with the words 'No offense.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity...When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Nothing,' wrote Tolstoy, 'can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Look for happiness under your own roof.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“The things that go wrong often make the best memories.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“When I find myself focusing overmuch on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal, I remind myself to 'Enjoy now'. If I can enjoy the present, I don't need to count on the happiness that is (or isn't) waiting for me in the future".”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“It's about living in the moment and appreciating the smallest things. Surrounding yourself with the things that inspire you and letting go of the obsessions that want to take over your mind. It is a daily struggle sometimes and hard work but happiness begins with your own attitude and how you look at the world.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure - but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability, it turns out, because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“The First Splendid Truth: To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Studies show that aggressively expressing anger doesn't relieve anger but amplifies it. On the other hand, not expressing anger often allows it to disappear without leaving ugly traces.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously -- and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“It's easy to be heavy; hard to be light.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“... one flaw throws the loveliness of [everything else] into focus. I remember reading that Shakers deliberately introduced a mistake into the things they made, to show that man shouldn't aspire to the perfection of God. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“There are no do overs and some things just aren't going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what is”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“I can DO ANYTHING I want, but I can't DO EVERYTHING I want.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Money. It's a good servant but a bad master.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“I enjoy the fun of failure. It's fun to fail, I kept repeating. It's part of being ambitious; it's part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“We must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Did I have a heart to be contented? Well, no, not particularly. I had a tendency to be discontented: ambitious, dissatisfied, fretful, and tough to please...It's easier to complain than to laugh, easier to yell than to joke around, easier to be demanding than to be satisfied.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“He is my fate. He's my soul mate. He pervades my whole existence. So, of course, I often ignore him.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“I grasped two things: I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasnt going to change unless I made it change.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“[Benjamin Franklin]identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate--temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility--and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“What you do everyday matters more than what you do once in a while.”
― Gretchen Rubin, quote from The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Gretchen Rubin
Born place: Kansas City, Missouri, The United States
See more on GoodReads
“There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the power of the stars in their paws. Firestar”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Firestar's Quest
“People don’t keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people, like a secret they don’t want to tell but they want everyone to know.”
― Marilyn Manson, quote from The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
“I am not plain, or average or - God forbid - vanilla. I am peanut butter rocky road with multicolored sprinkles, hot fudge and a cherry on top.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Every Soul a Star
“I know why she stormed out of here."
Decebel's and Jacque's heads both whipped around. "You do?" they both asked at the same time.
Fane raised an eyebrow at Sally's words.
Sally in turn eyeballed Decebel. "Jen never really learned how to use an inside voice. So, Decebel, why don't you share how she asked you if you were involved with Crina, and how you never really gave her an answer but instead taunted her, and then nearly made her hyperventilate with desire."
Decebel's head cocked to the side, his eyebrows drawn together. "How -"
"I would say it's a gift, but really I'm just nosy as hell. And damn, boy, the look you were giving her nearly had me in a puddle."
"Shut up!" Jacque squealed. "Are you telling me Jen stormed out of here because he got her all hot and bothered?"
Sally was grinning from ear to ear. Decebel looked like he would be perfectly happy if the universe would just swallow him whole.
"She was angry when she left," Decebel defended. "She left because she was mad."
"Yeah, mad because she's got it bad for you, Sherlock," Sally told him, rolling her eyes.
"Really? She likes me?"
Jacque laughed at Decebel's cocky smile.
"Um, if you aren't her mate that's not a good thing, Casanova," Jacque reminded him.
Sally nodded in agreement, scrutinizing Decebel. "Let's just hope that she finds her mate at Mate Fest so she can get over you."
Decebel took a step towards Sally. Fane stepped around Jacque and laid a hand on Decebel's chest, stopping him. "Easy, Beta."
Decebel closed his eyes taking slow breaths, leashing his wolf. Then Sally's words worked past the jealous fog. "Mate Fest?" he questioned.
Sally grinned. "Jen deemed it."
"Naturally," Decebel muttered with a slight smile.”
― Quinn Loftis, quote from Just One Drop
“Twenty-six,” you said. “One for each day we’ve been together, Min.”Somebody oohed. Somebody shushed them.
“And I hope that someday I’ll do another something stupid and I’ll have to say it a million times because that’s how long it’ll be, together with you, Min. With you.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Why We Broke Up
Clarissa, or, the Hi...
Drums, Girls & Dange...
Return to Paradise
Trial by Fire
The Twelve
Magic RisesBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2018, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
